Positive Experience/Entertaining? Mildly so. The burning (ha ha, get it?) question for me was, “Will this be better than Roger Corman’s never-released version?” The anwer: sorta.

Technically any good? Well, it obviously cost more than Corman’s… If they had decided to go whole-hog for camp value, the film might have succeeded; instead, most of the “funny” stuff will make you cringe.

The story seems a bit “small”– the heroes spend most of the film dealing with their new powers (in very lame ways) and the climax ends up as more of a personal grudge match then anything else. If you’re expecting Doctor Doom to try to blow up the world or something, you’ll be disappointed.

Essentially this is supposed to be a character-driven story, but the character dynamics aren’t too interesting and the actors don’t have much to work with. However, Chiklis stands out as Ben Grimm/The Thing, even when he’s laden with prosthetics. Ioan Gruffudd is perfectly cast as Reed Richards; despite the fact that he’s so good-looking, I bought him completely as the scientist who doesn’t “get it” a lot of the time. The very pretty Jessica Alba is forced to play “the girl” instead of a real character. Chris Evans is just right as the cocky Johnny Storm, but frankly it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch (huh, should have applied that phrase to Gruffudd, I suppose). He does get to show off a very impressive body, though. Essentially he and Alba are a pair of “his and hers” bimbos.

How did it leave me feeling? I wasn’t expecting anything revelatory, but it still managed to mildly disappoint me, plus I rolled my eyes at the ending-that-isn’t-really-an-ending-but-the-beginning-of-a-franchise.

Final Rating? RTV; amazingly, it’s a story of super-powered beings that isn’t all that interesting on the big screen.